The present invention relates generally to an apparatus, system and method for an automated stock ledger.
In large scale conventional food markets, food products are typically ordered from numerous general distributors and then sold to the consumers through multiple outlets stores. In such environments, because the supply chain includes multiple delivery and storage points before the consumer has access to produce and prepared foods, there is usually a lag time between picking of the produce and preparation of the food. This of course reduces food quality, shelf life and ultimately, the taste.
The current trend is to prepare food products and sell such prepared food products directly to the consumer at the market location close to the consumer on a daily basis. In this regard, conventional markets have attempted to create homemade food products by making such products locally at the store, using local produce growers and then presenting the products to the consumers for sale on a daily basis. However, rarely are such large scale conventional markets organized and efficient enough to create such freshly made food products on a large scale in order to maximize profits. As a result, such large scale conventional markets having fresh made foods tend to include a limited selection and bandwidth.
There are some enterprises that specialize in the homemade food market environment. These enterprises tend to be small in comparison to conventional food markets as well as geographically limited. Such attributes provide enterprises with the ability to cater to local consumers with homemade food on a relatively large scale in the local market space. However the homemade nature of this market creates an inherent problem. Namely, the speed with which the produce is picked or the food is prepared and then presented to the consumer for purchase is of paramount importance. As such, transfers from the creation facility to the department location and to the point of sale need to be tracked for accurate accounting of the product. As success builds upon the homemade nature and high quality food products additional stores are typically added.
Such expansion naturally exacerbates product and supply stream issues. In the rapid production and sale environment inherent with daily homemade food production a problem with tracking and accounting for thousands of products becomes exponentially more difficult to overcome. The problem is compounded as the number of stores increases as well as the number of products sold. Moreover, a market based on producing and selling prepared food products on a daily basis typically includes multiple internal facilities such as a central kitchen, bakery, cheese making facility, produce assembly facility, butcher facility, forward buy facility, and the consumer markets locations.
With the daily volume of products purchased, food products prepared and then sold to the consumer, such markets must also account for the internal movement of goods and products. Accounting for transfers, including warehouse transfers, store to store transfers and departmental transfers has historically been a paper intensive exercise. For example, produce arriving from a local grower may leave the assembly facility to arrive in a kitchen department to prepare foods requiring such produce. All receipts and transfers of the produce must be accounted for in the produce department, the kitchen department as well as the accounting office. Furthermore, such transfers need to be accounted for when the prepared food product is sold to the consumer so reports can be generated to determine margin for such sales of the prepared food. In this way, a market in the homemade food market can track all products purchased, all foods prepared and ultimately sold all while managing the flow of information on a daily business in order to maximize profits.
Typically a market employee will manually check off documents listing such products upon removal from one area of the market and then manually check a receiving document upon arrival at another area of the market. Such low-tech systems for maintaining internal records are highly inefficient. In addition, other employees are required to manually review the transfer documents to account for products, which is a time intensive activity. In general, inventory management has typically been linear and monitoring reports have been static. Competitor analysis has found that such low-tech systems can provide robust reporting, however the reporting process is inefficient and largely static. Inventory review on a real time basis is almost impossible.
In this connection a stock ledger solution having the ability account for products transferring in and out of a business, as well as for tracking the movement of such products between internal departments, is therefore needed.
Such a stock ledger solution having the ability to quickly and efficiently identify and account for deviations in purchase orders and received products is also desired.
Such a stock ledger solution having the ability to maintain accounting integrity from the creation of the product, to the internal transfer of the product and finally to the sale thereof in a rapidly moving system of a homemade food product facility is further desired.
A method to analyze and track inventory changes with build-on capabilities to expand data analysis is also needed. Such a mechanism having the ability to track inventory efficiently and perform data analysis on a dynamic level also needed. Such a method providing the ability to provide inventory data snapshots and inventory levels is further needed.
Such a process that provides the ability to view inventory from a central starting point, and examined among various data point dimensions is further needed.
Such a system will be able to ascertain data from multiple legacy systems and efficiently provide reports to users to garner real time inventory tracking across multiple dimensions.